Zappos Killed the Job Posting – Should You?

Zappos is often out in front of new and unusual HR policies. It originated the “pay employees to quit” policy adopted by Amazon.com. And now, Zappos will abandon job postings, according to Stacy Donovan Zapar, Zappos’ Social Recruiting and Employer Branding Strategist. The “abandon job postings” policy recalls an earlier era — as Zapar says, “It’s old-school recruiting, made new and fresh again.”

So does this mean you should abandon job postings too? The correct answer is “it depends.” Shiny new HR practices should motivate savvy conversations, not just imitation. In this case, organization leaders should demand a conversation about talent sourcing as sophisticated as one about their supply chain.

An important piece of context is that Zappos has long used social channels to describe their culture, people, and events. Now, they have added the Zappos Insider program, which Zapar describes as a place “where people can sign up, stay in touch, talk to real people with real names and real faces, get to know us and allow us to get to know them. Our Insiders are people who might like to work for Zappos someday … today, tomorrow or at some point in the future.” It’s an old-school idea common to technology companies as far back as the 1980’s, akin to “we know more about the engineers that work for our competitors than they do.”

Another context element is that this policy applies to call centers, which employ a large number of people doing jobs that are similar, easily described, and familiar to most applicants. These are pivotal roles with significant consequences at Zappos and Amazon.com. Indeed, Zapar notes that Zappos received over 31,000 applications last year, responded to every single person who applied, and hired only 300 of those applicants. So, Zappos had a large existing staffing investment to work with. The company still has job descriptions “with actual titles and actual job descriptions and actual requirements, we’re just not posting them externally anymore.” So, abandoning job postings doesn’t mean random hiring.

These policies can be effective for Zappos, but how should you decide if they are right for you? Approach that question logically, and with sound fundamentals. Let’s “retool” the Zappos strategy through the staffing supply chain, to see how their innovation can spur a great conversation.

Zappos has a “labor pool” with some applicants who “spam post” resumes. Their new policy can yield an “applicant pool” that weeds them out in favor of applicants who invest effort interacting with Zappos employees. Zappos hopes to “screen” and “select” better, as Zapar describes, “We’re having conversations with candidates, getting to know them — their strengths, their interests, their personality — and matching them to jobs on the back end. Hard skills match is 50% of the equation but, as Scott mentioned, culture fit is 50% of the equation for us.” Zappos might also see benefits at the “offering and closing” and “onboarding” stages, because decades of research suggests that candidates who devote effort to the recruitment process more readily accept an offer, and a “realistic job preview” increases candidate commitment and performance.

The staffing supply chain also reveals why the policy may not work for everyone.

Some applicants may be unwilling to spend time on the Insider site, particularly those with attractive alternatives. Zappos receives 100 applications for every vacancy, so they can probably take that chance. If your jobs are less familiar, more unique, or less attractive, your supply chain optimization may require getting more people into the pipeline, with an application process that makes it as easy as possible for them to apply, perhaps even an online job posting.

Zappos hopes the Insider site will help reveal culture fit, and believes that is best assessed through conversations and interaction. That sets a high bar for Zappos employees and hiring managers. They need to develop and analyze interactions rigorously and effectively. As Zapar said, “We’re just cutting those boring ole job postings out of the discussion and proactively chatting with candidates ahead of time so we know exactly who our top potential candidates might be by the time the opening becomes available.” Evidence suggests that chatting with candidates is not a valid approach, unless you invest in well-informed, disciplined, and skilled interviewers. At Zappos, the investment may be sensible, if 50 percent of performance hinges on culture and when the investment can be amortized across hundreds of yearly hires.

However, if you have a job for which the skills are rare, and can be identified from resumes or work samples, then your optimal supply chain should attract lots of resumes and work samples, perhaps even using algorithms rather than humans to winnow the pool in the early stages based on hard skills. You might even assess culture fit through deep conversations as Zappos does, but perhaps with a small number of well-trained interviews on a much smaller pre-selected group of candidates. You might “build” rather than “acquire” culture fit. Organizations like Disney, Toyota, and the military choose to use onboarding processes that nurture their unique cultural values beliefs and norms. If the talent you need is extremely rare, the optimal supply chain may not hire at all, but rather crowdsource from thousands of candidates who never become employees, removing the need to assess culture fit.

Companies like Zappos do a great service with their HR innovations, but that doesn’t mean you should simply copy them. HR and organization leaders should use them to pose good questions and have smart discussions.

John Boudreau is Professor of Management Organization at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business and Research Director at the university’s Center for Effective Organizations. He is an expert on the bridge between superior human capital, talent, and sustainable success and the author of many books and articles, including his latest book with Ravin Jesuthasan, Reinventing Jobs: A 4 Step Approach for Applying Automation to Work. Follow him on Twitter at: @JohnWBoudreau.